Tag: JavaScript

The Seidenberg School’s CS 641 Mobile Web Development class just wrapped up its second year, with 54 graduate students and one undergraduate in the class this semester. Students created iOS and Android apps with the Ionic 2 framework, and created online portfolios of their work.

The class is taught by Adjunct Professor Haik Sahakian. “If you’re a web developer, Ionic turns you into a mobile app developer as well. You write apps in Javascript that run on iOS and Android from the same code base. And it’s a fun way to learn Angular 2.”

One of the apps from the class was selected for a showcase of graduate student work being put together by the department chair, Dr Christelle Scharff. Written by William Dickerson, it uses the D3 and Leaflet JavaScript libraries to display a travel map of New York City. A user selects a point on the map and how far he or she is willing to walk, and the app displays which parts of the city are reachable with a single subway ride.

“[My app] began as a webpage, which took me about 40 hours to develop into what it is now. If I started from scratch today, it would probably take me less time, but D3, Leaflet, and even JavaScript were new to me at the time. Transitioning the webpage to a mobile app using the Ionic 2 framework took very little time, just a matter of hours.

I liked how each lecture and assignment in the Mobile Web class built on the previous one, allowing us to put everything together into projects worth sharing. We started the first lecture with a blank html file in a text editor, and by week 15, we had covered enough libraries, tools, and web fundamentals to build quality mobile webpages and apps.”

William Dickerson

The class’s apps feel very similar to native apps. Prof. Sahakian said Ionic achieves this because “it comes with web-based UI components that look and behave just like native components, and it uses the open source Cordova library to connect with a mobile device’s hardware and features. An Ionic app is an enhanced web page embedded in a native app wrapper, rather than a native app itself, so it’s a little slower than native for complex features and animations, but it works well, and enables web developers to build apps quickly.”

CS 641 Mobile Web Development is offered every Spring semester. Dr Scharff’s collection of graduate student work will be displayed in the Seidenberg Mobile Lab at 163 William St in the fall.

1. You work for Renthackr – any tips for incoming Pace students looking to rent in the fall?

USE RENTHACKR! Even just for curiosity’s sake. You can get some insider tips on buildings in the area, see where your Facebook friends live, and get an idea of how expensive rent really is. We also just added a “find by room” feature so you can find a room and skip out on some of the apartment hunting drama.

2. Could you tell us (briefly) what you’re working on this summer?

I’m one of two interns, and we are essentially the engineering team right now. Renthackr is built with Ruby on Rails primarily, and I’m really polishing my Ruby skills. I also have the pleasure of being in charge of the analytics of the site, so I’m getting to take the data from Ruby to D3.js graphs. It’s really fun getting to learn how to work with the full stack through challenges fixing up the existing application.

3. The work you’re doing right now… do you think there’s a particular subject you took last semester that’s helping you? Or a particular Professor who’s teachings deserve a shout out?

Dr. Wolf’s class on Ruby on Rails gave me a good foundation, and showed me what I’d be up against in the web development world. Dr. Scharff’s Programming Languages and Implementations class also has been an amazing help in my process of learning Ruby inside and out. I understand different datatypes better, and know where to look in the language to work out logic problems.

4. How does the co-working space at WeWork differ from the co-working space at Pace, Seidenberg? (Warning: Just checking to see where your loyalties lie)

WeWork is beautiful. So is Seidenberg. But WeWork is really a coworking space to be reckoned with. The design of the whole space is very welcoming and beautiful. The view from my desk couldn’t be better. Seidenberg has a great video game set-up, but so does WeWork to be honest. However, a whole lot more collaboration and teaching goes on at Seidenberg. A lot more work gets done at WeWork.

Julie Gauthier is an undergrad student at the Seidenberg School, majoring in computer science. She’s also the student manger at Seidenberg’s Creative Labs, overseeing tech projects from concept to completion, and happens to be the biggest fan of Dubstep DJ, Skrillex.